Docker caching of models folder

[CoWayger]

Hi,

is there any way of changing models folder? It contains some scripts, when i mount volume over it in docker-compose it will fail to download model.

Workaround for now is to start it in build phase of docker image and copy tmp scripts. But it would be much better experience to only mount folder for *.bin files.

[CoWayger]

Here is working workaround (You need to persistently mount these folders):

    volumes:
      - ./.docker-data/whisper-models:/data/whisper-models
      - ./.docker-data/whisper-build:/app/node_modules/nodejs-whisper/cpp/whisper.cpp/build

#!/bin/sh
set -e

MODELS_DIR="/app/node_modules/nodejs-whisper/cpp/whisper.cpp/models"
CACHE_DIR="/data/whisper-models"
WHISPER_CPP_DIR="/app/node_modules/nodejs-whisper/cpp/whisper.cpp"
BUILD_DIR="$WHISPER_CPP_DIR/build"

mkdir -p "$CACHE_DIR"

# Restore cached models
if ls "$CACHE_DIR"/*.bin >/dev/null 2>&1; then
  echo "Restoring models from cache..."
  cp "$CACHE_DIR"/*.bin "$MODELS_DIR/" 2>/dev/null || true
fi

# Check if whisper-cli is built, if not - build it
if [ ! -f "$BUILD_DIR/bin/whisper-cli" ]; then
  echo "Building whisper-cli..."
  cd "$WHISPER_CPP_DIR"
  cmake -B build
  cmake --build build --config Release
  echo "Whisper-cli built successfully"
fi

# Function to save models back to cache
save_models() {
  echo "Saving models to cache..."
  cp "$MODELS_DIR"/*.bin "$CACHE_DIR/" 2>/dev/null || true
}

# Trap signals to save models before exit
trap 'save_models; exit' TERM INT

# Run the app in background
"$@" &
PID=$!

# Wait for app to finish
wait $PID
EXIT_CODE=$?

# Save models before exiting
save_models

exit $EXIT_CODE

I hope it will help someone to save some hours.

[ChetanXpro]

Thanks for the detailed workaround.

I added support for modelRootPath, so models can now be downloaded/loaded from a separate mounted directory instead of mounting over the package’s internal models folder.

#245

Example:

await nodewhisper(wavPath, {
  modelName: 'tiny.en',
  autoDownloadModelName: 'tiny.en',
  modelRootPath: '/data/whisper-models',
})


I also added README docs with a Docker volume cache example.